Canada’s omnibus crime bill will lead to more physical and mental “degradation” among prisoners and risks their reintegration back into society, warns an article in Canada’s leading medical journal.

Bill C-1o — the Conservative government’s Safe Streets and Communities Act, which increases mandatory minimum sentences and changes eligibility for conditional sentences — will inevitably produce more prisoners serving longer prison sentences, Adelina Iftene and Allan Manson, of the faculty of law at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont., write in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

The fallout will be dramatic increases in already overcrowded prisons, “more stress, more volatility and the likelihood of more violence,” as well as increased spread of hepatitis, HIV and other infectious diseases, Manson said in an interview.

“From both an ethical and public safety perspective, one needs to consider a simple fact,” Manson and Iftene write in the CMAJ, noting that most prisoners in Canada will eventually be released. “The intrinsic difficulties of reintegration after a period of incarceration should not be compounded by physical and mental health challenges.”

“We’re in an era where jails are becoming the asylums of the past for many people with mental health problems,” Manson said.

Without more resources, more prisoners will overwhelm already overburdened prison mental health services, he said, “and that continues to be an issue after someone is released from jail. “People with mental health problems sometimes experience difficulty in conforming their behaviour to commonly accepted standards.”

Public Safety Minister Vic Toews has said that the bill would not lead to an “inordinate explosion” in the number of prisoners in federal prisons or provincial jails. The government has promised 2,700 new cells, “but we don’t have a timeframe for those 2,700 new cells,” Manson said.

He said double-bunking — where two prisoners are housed in a space intended for one — already accounts for more than 20 per cent of the prison population, and that double-bunking in and of itself increases stress and the potential for violence.

As the numbers of prisoners increase, fewer prisons will be able to offer the correctional programs necessary to motivate inmates, “stabilize their mental status” and give them a purpose, the authors write.

“The federal Office of the Correctional Investigations has predicted that penitentiaries will need to accommodate 3,400 more prisoners by 2013,” they said. “Ontario expects it will need a new prison for 1,000 prisoners at a cost of $900 million, and Quebec is anticipating spending up to $600 million on new cells. In an era of governmental budgetary restraint, is it likely that these allocations will be made?”